Rackspace

During the recent launch of the latest version of the Apple iPad, Rackspace Cloud Sites customer gdgt.com handled more than 55 million requests and more than 110,000 concurrent connections in less than six hours.

And gdgt.com is not alone. There are a host of examples that illustrate why web agencies turn to the Cloud Sites website hosting platform for scalability and reliability. Cloud Sites has really made a difference to our customers and remains an integral part of Rackspace’s product portfolio. More Cloud Sites data and statistics are available in this infographic, which takes a by-the-numbers look at Cloud Sites.

With that in mind, we’re excited to announce that Rackspace has added several new and long-awaited features to Cloud Sites, enhancements that make it easier to leverage PHP and .NET; manage DNS; and improve provisioning.

New Technologies: PHP 5.3 & .NET 4.0

First, Cloud Sites now supports PHP 5.3 with an updated and modern set of extensions.  This upgrade to PHP lets users take advantage of new features in the framework such as namespaces, lambda functions and closures, along with numerous performance improvements over PHP 5.2.

Cloud Sites users are able to create new sites leveraging PHP 5.3 or migrate existing sites to PHP 5.3 from the control panel.

Additionally, .NET 4.0 is now available as a technology selection within the control panel.  This new feature allows users to easily upgrade to the latest version of the .NET framework in an automated fashion.

DNS Management Updates

The DNS manager of Cloud Sites is now capable of managing TXT, SRV and AAAA records.  The addition of these record types gives users full control over their DNS configuration without needing to contact support to fulfill the request.

Other Improvements

Additionally, we’ve listened to customer feedback and have made several other changes to improve the overall user experience of Cloud Sites.

We’ve added MySQL server selection, which automatically populates your MySQL server when using the phpMyAdmin MySQL web administration tool.

We’ve also improved provisioning. Several key fixes have been made that improve the reliability of alias provisioning operations that previously had a high failure rate.

This release signals greater momentum and a bright future for Cloud Sites, and we’d like to thank all of our customers for their dedication and their feedback.

Also check out our new Cloud Sites website and this Press Release for a look at where Cloud Sites is headed.

As always, we welcome your feedback on Cloud Sties and your experience with these and other features on our product feedback site.